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The Nature of Nature (mander.xyz)

submitted 3 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[-] Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com 25 points 3 months ago

Pretty sure that "dead by 50 thing" includes all the infant mortality.

I bet he's also using the stats from peak mortality of European late middle ages with urbanisation but no good sewers.

[-] IMongoose@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago

50 actually seemed about right for me excluding infants so I looked it up.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2625386/

That study looks at lifespan after reaching 5, and 50 might still be a little generous with the care that humans could provide each other 50,000 years ago. 50 is about the lifespan of a king 3,000 years ago, I can't imagine gen pop faired better.

[-] Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com 3 points 3 months ago

It's also a sample size of 15 all "King's of Judah" which is already urbanised.

But it's good to see some decent data. It's a nice irregular line from there on, and women do gain a lot more improvement than men.

I wish I had access to scholarly journals still to do my own research, but I don't so I'll defer to your stuff for now. Thanks.

[-] rimjob_rainer@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 3 months ago

I wonder how the stats were in the stone age.

[-] Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Me too. We have plenty of bones of people who lived into old age with signs of disability or having been crippled.

But the overall stats not only do I not know, but since we only have a relatively minor number of data points it's hard to really say any of us will ever know.

What we have does tend to point to being better than a medieval city iirc, and I think the general consensus amongst anthropologists is that the transition to agriculture saw a decrease in life expectancy.